Courts make Bush confront race issue

Does a student benefit intellectually from studying at a university that is racially diverse? That question and the wider issue of affirmative action in education may be one of the first big issues to confront George W Bush when he becomes president next month.

A court case due to start in January and another just completed set the stage for a confrontation between those who believe in taking action to ensure that universities are culturally diverse and those who say the policy discriminates against white people.

Last week a US district court in Detroit upheld the right of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to promote a racially diverse student body by its admissions policy. The court dismissed the action brought by the Centre for Individual Rights, a conservative group in Washington, which argued that whites were being discriminated.

Judge Patrick Duggan said the university had presented "solid evidence regarding the educational benefits that flow from a racially and ethnically diverse student body".

On January 15 a different judge is due to hear a similar action against the university's law school. The cases highlight an issue that featured only briefly in the presidential election campaign when Al Gore reaffirmed his support for the policy in one of the televised debates and Mr Bush said he believed only in "affirmative access".

The case was brought on behalf of Jennifer Gratz and Patrick Hamacher, described in the submissions as "Caucasian residents of the state of Michigan" who had applied unsuccessfully for admission between 1995 and 1997.

The current admissions policy gives black, Latino and Native American students, students from poor backgrounds, and outstanding athletes, a 20-point bonus on a 150-point scale.

At present 8% of the university's 38,000 students are black, 4% Latino and just under 1% Native American. This is double the number of minority students in 1988. The university justifies the policy on the grounds that all students benefit intellectually because heterogeneity promotes sharper critical thinking.

Affirmative action, introduced in the wake of the civil rights movement to offset discrimination in education andemployment, has become a rallying point for conservative politicians.

In 1996 the US court of appeals ruled against the University of Texas law school, which had implemented the policy.

Other US universities then changed their admissions policies.

But the University of Michigan, under its liberal president Lee Bollinger, continued with the policy, on the grounds stated in its defence submission, that diversity increased the intellectual vitality of its education, scholarship, service, and communal life.

The policy was only examined in detail when a university professor of philosophy, Carl Cohen, discovered it and publicised it.

People who felt they had been discriminated against were asked to identify themselves, and the centre began its action.

Prof Cohen was backed by the conservative right while the university was supported by 20 of the world's best-known corporations, including Dow Chemicals, Procter and Gamble, Microsoft, Kelloggs, Eastman Kodak and Texaco.

The latest decision and the one in January will almost certainly be taken to appeal, probably as far as the supreme court.

The litigation has been given an added frisson by the playing-out of the presidential election, which led many to conclude that the supreme court's decisions on such matters may be motivated as much by political allegiances as strict interpretation of the law.